Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Bearing the Burden
Historians’ role in excusing the brutalities of empire-building
The Story from Below
The Irish working class’s long search for its voice to be heard in literature
People Like Us
Progressivism’s dirty secret: the left intellectuals abolish the poor
A Learning Curve
A German writer learns the cost of making a god of the nation
Educating Margaret
How Margaret Thatcher was persuaded to sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement
Intimate Oscillations
A poet’s odyssey ‑ from Dublin suburbs out into the world and back
Pagans, Snobs, Censors
Irish visual art and the vaunted uniqueness of our ‘spiritual heritage’
Intellectual Insurrection
The extraordinary range and tireless radical commitment of Edward Said
Not Like The Others
A pitch-perfect depiction of life as a teenage girl in 1980s Britain
The Pleasure Principle
A poet born to wealth and privilege whose gift miraculously survived
The World’s Doubleness
From the natural world to the grit and banality of everyday life
The Ghost Hunters
A literary treatment set in Florida of the classic ‘hero’s quest’ story